The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

35

In the kitchen, Titania and Brian started to row over his reluctance to carry her belongings down to the shed. The others drifted away from the kitchen table and sat on the stairs, not knowing where to go or what to do.

Eva heard their subdued voices echoing in the hallway, and invited them into her room.

Ruby lowered herself into the soup chair, Stanley perched on the end of the bed, using his walking stick as a support, and the others sat cross-legged on the floor, with their backs against the walls.

Alexander caught Eva’s gaze, and held it for a moment. Thomas and Venus began to play Cruel Russian Ballet Teacher, a game they had perfected over Christmas. When Venus ranted at Thomas that his arabesque was ‘rubbish’, and threatened to beat him with an imaginary stick, Alexander sent them downstairs to play.

Brian Junior’s mobile rang.

It was Ho.

Brian Junior said, ‘Yes?’ into the phone.

Where do I go to collect government money?’ asked Ho.

Brian Junior was momentarily confused. ‘I’m not with you. Explain.’

Ho said, ‘I have no money left for food. And I am hungry. I have phoned Poppy, but she does not answer. So, do you know the location of the government money office in Leeds?’

Brian Junior explained, ‘It won’t be open today. And they won’t give you any when they do open – you’re a full-time student.’

Ho asked again, ‘Where will I get money?’

Brian Junior said, ‘Ho, I can’t help you. I haven’t got room in my head for somebody else’s problems.’

‘If I go to one of your churches, and ask one of the priests for money, will they give me some?’

‘Probably not.’

‘But if I tell them I am very hungry, and have not eaten for two days and two nights?’

Brian Junior squirmed and said, ‘Please, this is making me feel ill.’

‘But I am like your Jesus in the desert. Sometimes he had no food.’

Brian Junior passed the phone to Brianne, who had been listening closely.

Brianne said angrily to Ho, ‘Now you’ve made three of us miserable.’

Ho said, ‘The phone is telling me that I have low credit power.’

Brianne said, ‘This is what you do. You put on your coat and your red scarf, and you go to the Sikh temple. It’s on the main road at the rear of our building There are orange flags flying outside. They will give you food. I know, because a boy in my seminar group blew his loan on a second-hand motorbike and a drum kit in the first week of term, and the Sikhs had to feed him for a month. Now, repeat back the instructions I have just given to you,’ she said, sternly. She listened for a moment, then said, ‘Right – coat, scarf, keys. Go now,’ and switched the phone off.

Alexander murmured, ‘Another Nazi in the house.’

Eva said, ‘Why is the poor boy in such a state?’

Brianne said, ‘He gave Poppy most of his money.

Stanley observed, ‘All roads lead to Poppy. What’s to be done with her?’

Brianne said, ‘I would happily see her walking away from our house, barefoot and dying in the snow.’

Eva held her head in her hands and said, ‘Brianne, please don’t talk like that. It makes you sound so callous.’

Brianne shouted, ‘You know nothing about her or the damage she’s caused! Why do you allow her to stay in our house? You know that me and Bri hate her guts!’

Ruby said, ‘Well, I for one feel sorry for the poor kid. Her main and dad have just died! I had a long talk with her yesterday. They’re bringing the bodies back to Leicester, and I told her to use the Co-op funeral service. They did a lovely job for your granddad. It wasn’t their fault they went to the wrong house to pick the body up. Fair-tree Avenue does sound like Fir Tree Avenue.’

Brianne knelt at the side of the soup chair and said, very slowly and deliberately, looking into her grandmother’s face, ‘Gran, why would the Dundee authorities bring her parents’ bodies back to Leicester? When, according to Poppy, they lived in a house in Hampstead, surrounded by their rich relations and celebrity friends. Hugh Grant was her next-door neighbour.’

Ruby said, impatiently, ‘I know that! Poppy told me that they used to give him rides in their plane. He took over the controls once, when Poppy’s dad fell ill at the wheel. He had to make an emergency landing on Hampstead Heath. A policeman was slightly hurt.’

Brianne shouted, ‘You stupid old woman! Everything she’s told you has been a complete lie!’

Ruby’s face crumpled. ‘I’m surprised at you, Brianne. Talking to your elders in such a way. You used to be such a nice quiet girl. You’ve changed since you went to that university.’

Brianne leapt up. ‘There are no bodies coming back to the Co-op! Her parents are alive and living in Maidenhead! Her mother was on Facebook this morning, telling her “friends” that she’d had an electric blanket for Christmas!’

Eva said, ‘How can you possibly know that?’

Brianne and Brian Junior exchanged a look, and Brian Junior said, ‘We’re good with computers.’

Brianne put her arm around Brian Junior’s shoulder and said, ‘She isn’t Poppy Roberts. Her name is Paula Gibb. Her parents live in a council house. They don’t own a private plane. They don’t even have a car or central heating.’

Alexander said, ‘At least they’ve got an electric blanket.’ He looked around the group.

Nobody but Eva was laughing.

Stanley asked, ‘How long have you known?’

Brianne said, ‘A couple of days. We saved it. There’s never anything to do on Boxing Day, is there?’

Yvonne remarked, ‘I think it’s disgusting personally, myself. The two of your big brains against that little grieving girl.’

Brianne said, calmly, ‘Bri, time to fetch the Poppy files.’

Brian Junior got up, stretching his arms in an attempt to relax his rigid muscles, as if imploring Brianne to show him more respect. Heaving a deep sigh, he went into his bedroom.

When he returned with a large green box file, Brianne said, ‘Hand the papers round.’

‘What, like, at random?’

She nodded.

He dispersed the official-looking papers, some stapled, all printouts.

There was silence for a few moments, as people read the opening paragraphs of the documents they had been handed.

Ruby said, ‘Well, I’ve read this first bit of mine twice and I still don’t understand it.’

Yvonne asked, ‘Are we to be tested by the Big Brains?’

Brianne said, ‘You’ve got the birth certificate, Yvonne. Read it to us.’

‘Stop talking to me as if I’m a dog, a mongrel dog. When I was a girl -’

Brianne interrupted, ‘Yeah, when you were a girl, you were writing on a slate with a piece of chalk.’

Eva ordered her daughter, ‘Apologise to Granny.’

Brianne muttered ungraciously, ‘Soz.’

‘Well, it says here, this is the birth certificate of a child called Paula Gibb, born on the 31st of July 1993, her dad was Dean Arthur Gibb, car park attendant, and her mum was Claire Theresa Maria Gibb, bowling alley assistant.’

Brian Junior laughed out loud and said in a bad American accent, ‘Fuck it, dude, let’s go bowling.’

His family had never heard Brian Junior swear before. Eva was pleased at this proof that Brian Junior could be a normal foul-mouthed teenager.

Brianne turned to her brother. ‘Bri, no Lebowski, please. This is serious business.’

Alexander said, ‘I’ve got a social worker’s report here. When she was three and a half, Paula was temporarily taken into care and fostered.’

A stillness settled over the room.

Eva looked up from her printouts. ‘I’ve got an admission report for University Hospital, on the 11th of June 1995, and a six-month review written by her social worker, Delfina Ladzinski.’ Eva scanned the papers. Where do I start?’ She cleared her throat and read out what she thought were the most important details, as though she were reading the shipping forecast.

‘Medical assessment on being taken into care: cigarette burns on the backs of her hands and forearms, head lice, infected fleabites, impetigo. She was malnourished, unable to speak. Afraid to use the toilet. It’s hardly Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, is it?’

Yvonne got up. ‘Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve had enough of this. It’s Boxing Day. I want some turkey sandwiches and a game of Mr Potato Head, not all this wallowing in the gutter.’

Ruby said, ‘Sit down, Yvonne! There are some things that have to be faced full on. I’ve got a report here from Thames Valley Police, about an arson attack on a children’s home in Reading. Paula Gibb was questioned but said she’d only been trying to light a cigarette using a Zip firelighter. She’d panicked and thrown the firelighter into the Activities Room, where it landed in the middle of the pool table -’

Yvonne interrupted. ‘All this is making me poorly.’

Eva said, ‘It explains everything.’

Stanley insisted, ‘But none of that excuses her current behaviour.’

Alexander nodded. ‘My mum used to leave me locked in my room in the dark. I don’t know where she went. She ordered me to keep clear of the window and told me that if I cried she would send me away, so I did as I was told. But The done OK.’

He looked up to find Eva gazing back at him with a fierce look in her eyes, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

Yvonne said, miserably, ‘If I’d known there was a deranged person staying here – well, another deranged person – I would never have come.’

Eva countered, ‘I’m not deranged, Yvonne. Can I remind you that your son, my husband, is downstairs arguing with his mistress?’

Yvonne looked down and straightened the rings on her arthritic fingers.

Brian Junior said, ‘I’ve got her GCSE and A level certificates here. She got twelve GCSEs, nothing below a C grade, but only two A levels – an A in English, and an A* in Religious Studies.’

‘So, she’s not just a psychopath,’ Alexander said, ‘she’s quite a clever psychopath. Now that is frightening.’

They all jumped and stared at the bedroom door as they heard the front door slam, followed by the familiar clump of Poppy’s boots in the hall.

Eva said, ‘I want to talk to her. Brian Junior, will you ask her to come up here, please?’

‘Why me, why do I have to go? I don’t want to speak to her. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want to breathe the same air as her.’

Everybody looked at everybody else, but nobody moved.

Alexander said, ‘I’ll go.’

He went downstairs and eventually found her pretending to be asleep on the sofa in the sitting room, covered in a red blanket. She didn’t open her eyes, but Alexander could see by the flickering of her eyelids that she wasn’t really asleep.

He said, loudly, ‘Eva wants to see you,’ then watched her impersonating someone waking up. He felt a mixture of pity and contempt for her.

Poppy/Paula exclaimed, ‘I must have fallen asleep! It was an exhausting morning. Everybody at the shelter wanted a little bit of Poppy time.’

Alexander said, ‘Well, now Eva wants a little bit of Poppy time.’

When they walked into Eva’s bedroom, Poppy was met by a room full of accusatory faces. But she’d been in similar situations many times before. ‘Style it out, girl,’ she said to herself.

Eva patted the side of the bed and said, ‘Sit here, Paula. You don’t have to lie any more. We know who you are. We know your parents are alive.’ She held up a piece of paper. ‘It says here that your mother went to the Department of Work and Pensions on the 22nd of December, and asked for a crisis loan, claiming that she had no money for Christmas. Your mother is Claire Theresa Maria Gibb, isn’t she? Incidentally, are you Poppy or Paula?’

‘Poppy,’ the girl said, with a crooked nervous smile. ‘Please, don’t call me Paula. Please. Don’t call me Paula. I gave myself a new name. Don’t call me Paula.’

Eva took her hand and said, ‘OK. You’re Poppy. Why don’t you try to be yourself?’

Poppy’s first instinct was to pretend to cry, and sob, ‘But I don’t know who I am!’ Then she became curious: who was she? She would try to drop the little-girl voice, she thought. When she looked at the fraying 1950s evening dress she was wearing, it suddenly didn’t seem as charmingly eccentric as vintage clothes did on Helena Bonham Carter. And her big boots, with the carefully loosened laces, no longer gave her ‘character’. She shifted the gears in her brain into neutral and waited a few seconds to see where this would take her. She said, testing her new voice, ‘Can I stay until uni starts, please?’

Brianne and Brian Junior said, in unison, ‘No!’

Eva said, ‘Yes, you can stay until term starts. But these are the house rules. One, no more lies.’

Poppy repeated, ‘No more lies.’

‘Two, no more lounging on the sofa in your underwear. And three, no more stealing.’

Brianne said, ‘I found our egg timer in her bag last night.’

Poppy sat down next to Alexander, who said, ‘You’ve been given a great chance. Don’t fuck it up.’

Brianne said, ‘So, that’s it, is it? She’s forgiven, is she?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘Just like I’ve forgiven Dad.’

Stanley raised his hand and asked, ‘May I say something?’ He looked at Poppy. ‘I’m not a very forgiving person, and I cannot tell you how angry and distressed I am about your swastika tattoo. It has been preying on my mind. I know you are young, but you must have studied modern history and be fully aware that the swastika symbolises a great evil. And please don’t tell me that your fascist tattoo represents a Hindu god, or some such nonsense. You and I know that you chose a swastika either because you’re a Nazi, or because you wanted to boast about your alienation from our mostly decent society in order to shock. You could have chosen a snake, a flower, a bluebird, but you chose the swastika. I have in my house a collection of videos which chart the progress of the Second World War. One of those videos shows the liberation of Belsen, the concentration camp. Have you heard of Belsen?’

‘It’s where Anne Frank died. I did her for GCSE.’

Stanley continued, ‘When the Allied troops arrived to free the prisoners, they found skeletal creatures barely alive, pleading for food and water. A large pit was discovered, full of dead bodies. Horrifically, some poor wretches were still alive. A bulldozer -’

Ruby shouted, ‘No more, Stanley!’

‘I apologise, I didn’t want to upset…’ He turned back to Poppy. ‘If you would like to see the video, you are welcome to come and sit with me, and we will watch it together.’

Poppy shook her head.

There was silence.

Eventually, Poppy said, ‘I’ll have it removed, lasered off. I adore Anne Frank. I forgot she was a Jew I cried when the Nazis found her in the attic. I only had a swastika tattoo when I was fourteen because I was infatuated with a boy who loved Hitler. He had a suitcase under his bed, full of daggers and medals and stuff. He told me that Hitler was an animal lover and a vegetarian, and he only wanted to bring peace to the world. When we were in his bedroom, his rule was that we called each other Adolf and Eva.’

Everybody looked at Eva, who said, ‘Blame my mother.’

Ruby said indignantly, ‘You’re named after the film star. Eva Marie Saint.’

‘He went off me after two months,’ said Poppy, ‘but the tattoo stayed.’

Stanley nodded. ‘I shan’t speak of it again.’ He gave a little cough, which acted as a punctuation mark, then turned to Ruby and said, ‘Ah, Eva Marie Saint. The scene with Marlon Brando. The swing, the glove, her lovely face.’

The conversation had turned.

Alexander was the last to leave Eva’s room.

‘If you need me, ring,’ he said, ‘and I’ll come running.’ When he had gone, Eva could not get the words of the song out of her head. She started to sing it quietly, to herself. Winter, spring, summer or fall…’

In the middle of the night, when the rest of the household were asleep, Poppy crept into Eva’s room. The walls were illuminated by the full moon, and it was by this light that Poppy climbed into the bed.

Eva stirred but did not wake.

Poppy laid her face against Eva’s shoulder, and put her arm around Eva’s waist.

In the morning, Eva felt the presence of another person. But when she turned to look, she saw only a depression in the pillow.